MMO HELL

Streaming games is likely to become more popular in the future.

All you are doing is streaming a video. Plenty of tech already exists to do that. The only real problem is in terms of getting the input loop fast enough. At the moment you have to be really close to the server for this to work.

But streaming lets you play massive, uber powerful games on ridiculously light weight, portable devices.

There is one application where I've seen streaming tech already deployed. Multiplayer VR is a perfect candidate for streaming. No one wants to carry around a massive computer on their back. Nor are deviations in the world acceptable, they can actually present a safety risk. And having a local, dedicated server makes sense.

The tech will only get better with time. It's what tech does. So expect to be streaming massively powerful games on a tablet near you at some point in the not too distant future.

 

1080p60fps, or it's not worthy of the glorious PC-masterrace!

Blizzard might be able to burn money if they want. I'm not talking about Blizzard. I just doubt that there is a way with current tech to make such a thing happen in a profitable way. I don't care about MMOs and I'm not invested enough to do any research to back my argument. I suggest you look at renderfarm prices and make an educated guess as to what an hour of actual playtime would have to cost for a single player. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. The concept is interesting for sure!

Take a complex sample scene and add a few cameras that render to fullscreen rendertextures and report back how it affects performance. I'd imagine it is quite expensive per extra camera, but I never tested it.

 

Minimum, but preferably 1440p@120Hz, right?

 

Well, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Anyone heard from the OP or is he already done with Unity?

 

Darn it. Another one lost. I really am keen to play this best MMO ever they keep talking about. We just need one of these noobs to hang around for the month it takes to finish it.

 

He was on his way to uncover the great MMO-conspiracy. Maybe they found and silenced him?

 

We may have. I'll check the records.

 

You know, you guys need to get out. LOL There is a significant group of players who are tired of the massive games. Some rather smallish MMO's by Indies are doing well. No, they are not on the scale of WoW, but nor are they meant to be.

Part of the problem I see with Indie developers is that some figure that if they can't compete with the WoW's or the Minecrafts, then they might as well not try. But within every WoW-like group, there are subsets of people who are looking for something different. If you visit some of the many gaming forums out there, you will hear them.

 

Word!

 

Ideally 1440p@144Hz.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-XG270HU-omidpx-FREESYNC-Widescreen/dp/B00VRCLHYS

 

They would be SSMOs, wouldn't they? Small-scale multiplayer online

 

Where do you generally find information about them?

I tend to call them Multi-User Dungeons but I suppose that term is associated with text-based games.

 

Yeah, I use MUD/MUSH to describe text-based ones. Most of the times real MMOs aren't actually that massive either, since developers love pushing players into small instances with limited group sizes. Besides, how the hell do you organise 120 people fighting for a common goal? In my experience, you don't. You just clobber that creature and hope everybody stops when Big Attack comes around!

 

This might have something to do with the limits of how many players can your physics engine support on a single server.

Plus crowded places aren't that fun and it's not nice when all the good leveling places are taken by other players and there is nowhere else to go (for your level).

I know some games allow for massive pvp battles, where, for example, one nation would raid another nation for items that give nation-wide buffs. That's interesting, but if you're not leading the battle or if you're not max level then you can't do much to change the outcome. It simply isn't fun for the new players in a level based games such as most mmos are.

 

@Ryiah, I mostly learn about them from gamer friends and my son, who all like the smaller indie games. Some games like Istaria started out as a big commercial game but were sold at least once and are now much smaller. They have been around for years and is my young adult son's favorite game. Tales in the Desert is another. Wurm Online, while a huge world, was built mostly by volunteers after it was mostly abandoned by the earlier team. It is a slow pondering game, but it has a loyal following. There are many more. Most of my friends, whether they are MMO elitists or whatever, seem to avoid Archeage and WoW. I have no idea why. They also have nothing good to say about Elder Scrolls.

There was a huge discussion here about what to call a game that had less than 10k players. Massive doesn't seem to apply anymore but in the end we decided MMO is the really the only choice. Multiplayer usually applies to under 64 players and has a different feel than an MMO, with lobbies and matchmaking.

Our game is what I would call a small MMO. That feels contradictory to me...small massive? But there are no other good ways to describe it. I think that is why I often get PMs from people telling me my project is too "massive". lol

But no...it is not. It is very doable and I would like to see the indies who want to do MMO's try smaller MMO's. Not only will they be easier to make, but much more realistic when it comes to actually running the game.

I know there was a small MMO run by some T3d folks, a husband/wife team and that it is still running. Just because you guys don't see these games, doesn't mean they don't exist. As for MUDs, MUSHes and Mux's, there are some of those that have been running for many many years, longer than just about any commercial MMO.

Problem is...everyone wants everything. They want to make a game that competes with WoW, they want a HUGE world because they think that is what everyone wants, and then they NEED a huge population because otherwise the HUGE world will be a waste of development time.

 

In addition, a huge world will feel very empty if there aren't very many players, unless you've got really good AI in your NPCs, which nobody has.

(Though if anybody wants to try it... call me! That's a project I've been dreaming about for years.)

 

Some MMOs feel like single-player games with very bad AI. Most other players aren't actually that smart :/

 

The problem with this approach is it ignores some realities of bandwidth. If you look at how bandwidth is sold, and the cost of upgrading the last mile for mobile devices, it's really hard to see how bandwidth availability will get to where it needs to be, and at the same time outpace cpu availability. Cpu/gpu are not going to just stay where they are either.

Bandwidth pricing at the carrier level has dropped every year since it's been tracked. It's ridiculously cheap now providers who exchange traffic pay under $1 per mbps. But last mile especially mobile has not followed the same curve, because the last mile is where all the cost is. This is very easy to see if you compare consumer home/mobile bandwidth pricing vs paying for bandwidth in a data center. And for mobile the tech required for large scale streaming isn't even close to being there, you are a decade away at least.

Also if you approach it as a bandwidth problem, you have to solve it on a much larger scale for it to be viable. All major providers have to get to a viable level. But with hardware you don't need that One vendor who comes up with a small powerful gpu can change the entire market.

So my bet is firmly on the hardware side.

 

Mmo's are not where the money is. Mmo's are largely made because that's what a lot of game developers want to make. I actually don't know of another segment that does worse then mmo's in terms of revenue and return on value. If you take Wow out of the picture, hell take the top 3 mmo's out of the picture in terms of gross revenue, and it's actually pretty sad. I worked on a social game made in flash that made more revenue then all but the top 3 mmo's worldwide. And there are a lot of casual games doing the same.

As far as the knowledge, its' out there but most developers just don't put in the effort to find it. This whole conspiracy notion is basically just covering up the fact that you don't want to do what you need to do to get where you want to go. The information is out there and there are a lot of us vets that are more then willing to help people that are actually serious. So take that whole idea and put it where it belongs.

 

@snacktime
I was kidding when I said "MMOs are where the money is", but I'm interested why you think mmos are so unprofitable and what's the name of this social game of yours, so I could try it?

 

MMOs are plenty profitable, assuming they get the playerbase. If you can get 100k players in the first year, you're at least breaking even.

Also, a "smallish" MMO is very possible for an indie team. I'm actually working on a... not-smallish MMO, but I also have industry vets from Fallout, Final Fantasy, Parasite Eve, etc., and a near endless supply of funding. But I'm charmed

 

This. There cannot be that many game players out there willing to play MMOs to make up player bases for all of the devs who come on here with an idea for an MMO.

 

I never said they were unprofitable. I chose my words carefully but people hear what they want to hear. Go google online game revenue and start putting stuff together. Go look at funding and see where the money is going. Much like making an mmo, go do some actual research.

 

Not if everyone makes the same MMO and goes for the same types of players.

 

Wasn't that implied by the reference to the noobs with only a dream?

 

Dreams are free. Far be it for me to destroy anyone's dream. If you never dream, you never take the first step.

Besides, who to say that a new developer won't have some idea for a different MMO?

 

I didn't say they won't have new ideas. Or that they can't have new ideas.

What I will say is they haven't yet had new ideas.

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance and all that. But after a while hanging out here I've lost confidence in peoples ability to realise these dreams.

 

Ya it's easy to lose faith hanging out here The way I look at is you have thousands of new people coming in constantly. they don't know much of anything and when they find out how much work it takes to actually make a game, they end up moving on. So you have a core group of people who have stuck with it, and just a constant stream of noise that repeats itself with every crop of newcomers who will very quickly be gone.

There's nothing wrong with being new and then figuring out you don't really want to put in the effort required, it just is what it is. But for those that have been around a while the same stream of already asked and answered questions and same ideas rehashed does get a bit tiring.

 

Thank goodness we all stuck around, regardless of how difficult it is. We may not realize our dreams either regarding game development but we will certainly have fun doing it, just like we are now with our crazy discussions.

 

Why not 4k? If we're going big, go big!
Gigi

 

@Teila & @snacktime - With Unity out promoting the whole "170,000 games made this year" thing...as if it is a good thing (for them, clearly it is). I don't know if they stick around or not, but I would assume 169,900 of them don't, else we'd be up to our elbows in more pipe-dream posts about the next WoW slaying MMO made on a budget of toothpaste and personality with a team of volunteers.

 

Mostly because we can't push those crazy frame rates at 4k, or at least some PCARS players reported that

 

WOW has a team of over 100 developers and artists and it takes them 2 years to make an expansion for a MMORPG.

The amount of skills you need to be an expert in to create a MMORPG is huge. Most people that post on the forums about building their ´MMORPG´ have basic Unity skills and expect the other stuff to just fall into place. In most cases, they don´t know what they don´t know..

Beyond the expertise needed, there is also a huge amount of grunt hours involved. And that is just to build the game, then you have to cross your fingers and hope you have at least reasonably balanced the game and in the end, made it fun and different enough for people to be even bothered to buy it. How many big companies have succeeded in building a game, having all the tech stuff work, and then have the game collapse in the first few months because of design issues?

Of the people posting on these forums, way less than 1% have the skills necessary to even make a MMORPG to begin with, and then you still have to deal with all the design issues and marketing if you could get a functioning game going.

There is nothing wrong with building a MMORPG with Unity, it is a fun hobby and interesting to learn as you go ( I would imagine). In many people there is this eternal optimism and there are people who always want to support people with a dream.. but I think on these forums, the majority of us are just realists. If you are asking basic questions about scripting.. put your MMORPG on hold and tell us about your mobile game first.

My other personal beef, and this annoys me to no end on these forums is people who treat ´an idea´ like an accomplishment. ´Hey guys, I have done absolutely no work on this game, but I have this idea, please pat me on the back´.. There is never a reason to announce or brag about a project, let alone a MMORPG until you have at least a functioning prototype.

 

Because unless you're happy with a low refresh rate you don't really want a 4K for gaming. They're simply not at the point where they're good enough yet. The ideal monitors for gaming right now are 1440p or 1080p if you're on a budget.

Not to mention you need a strong graphics card to actually drive a 4K monitor.

 

Buzzkill! Raining on my parade.
Gigi

 

I am sad this is your personal beef. Really, it doesn't affect you at all, has no bearing on your life or your work.

My personal beef, other people trying to control what others do or say. Who cares? If they accomplish or not, it is their failure, not yours or mine.

Let them brag, ignore it. Bragging has been around ever since the first story about the fish that got away. Bragging about the game that never was is just the modern interpretation.

 

Irony much? So you are saying that people who want to brag about downloading an asset from the store should be allowed to make threads announcing the´progress´ of their latest MMORPG... because it is wrong for us to control what others do or say.... but I should not say anything and ignore it? You can´t have it both ways. If they are free to start a thread announcing a game that consists of a single asset from the Unity store, then certainly I have a right to post in that thread pointing out what they are doing. And to be honest, I only really do it for guys who start threads announcing 3 different MMORPGs and 3 other games in the same year... all using nothing but a single package from the asset store.

Also, I said it was a personal beef, which means I don´t expect Unity or anyone to change rules or anything. I never said MMO-Devx3 should stop making threads, I simply said it bugs me when people announce a game and the only work they have put into it is downloading something from the asset store.

 

Carve, you really need to move on and stop trying to bring up closed threads. That is sad. It is against Unity's rules to hijack a thread to bring up a thread that was closed. Not only that, but it serves no purpose but to drag out something that is over and has nothing to do with the OP's post.

Honestly, I am sorry I engaged with you on this thread and won't make that same mistake.

 

Not sure it is hijacking.. The OP directly talked about new Unity users who start with an MMORPG as their first project. And like I said, it is fine to do it, build what you can, learn what you can, have fun doing it. The only part you probably, in my opinion, shouldn´t do is announce it to the world until you have some functionality... because those of us that have been on the forums for awhile have seen countless ´my new MMORPG´ threads and they never go anywhere.

 

Maybe the existence of those threads is a "neccessary evil" to document how many people start such projects and never finish them, so that maybe some can be prevented from suffering the same fate of aiming for WOW when they should aim for Pong?

 

Those threads was not about aiming for Pong. They were about things better left to private discussions or drama-loving forums. It will help no one.

 

And that goes back to what the OP was talking about. If I can paraphrase his question, to me it sounded like ´why does nobody take serious or support people when they announce MMORPGs.´ .. and the answer is... because you are now the 10000th person who started a thread announcing a MMORPG before you even started working on it.

It comes down to logic. If you don´t have enough experience with making games that you think you should be announcing a MMORPG ( or even single player game) before you have done any work... then you don´t have enough experience to complete an MMORPG.

You know what should be left to private conversations?? announcing a game before you have done any work on it.

 

I thought the OP was more asking why all of these MMO ideas fail...possibly because he has ideas of his own and wants to avoid the common pitfalls or to figure out if it's even possible for him to do.

In terms of support as far as I've seen the people who come out saying they want to make one generally get a large bounty of support...it just tells them to shelve that idea for now and focus on making something small first. Maybe not what they wanted to hear but those that are truly motivated and dedicated enough could eventually achieve some measure of success.

Or it could all fall flat despite their best efforts, but hey that's game development.

 

I think he wanted to know why people do not talk about their failures and share the experiences.

 

Thought that bit had already been answered....because most of the people with these ideas just end up drifting off and not making anything.

As for the others who plug away and work on it (someone in the thread mentioned they are a few days/week? ago) well, they're still working and it hasn't "failed". They just have a more realistic attitude towards how long it'll take.

 

This. These MMOs probably don't so much fail spectacularly, but rather fade into obscurity.

That said, there are plenty of threads around done by people that basically amount too "why did I start so big? now I get the point of scoping small"

 

That is so true. It takes a very long time, especially with a small team. If one is patient, that is great, but many come here who are not so patient and that is their only failure.

 

As someone who has made MMO's successfully (not on my own). Your biggest challenges are the servers for gameplay, login, and billing. Also testing.

People don't think about testing as much as they should. Want to design a forty man raid? You better have forty players willing to play an unfinished, unbalanced, buggy experience hundreds of times while you work to get things right.

 

(sarcasm) Testing is no longer needed, just put it on steam early access for $20 and you will get paid to have others do it for you and you can just keep saying ´hey, we said it was alpha´ for as many years as you want as an excuse for your buggy game. It is win-win... you win money, you win testers. ( /sarcasm).

 

Charging a discount is no longer needed either. Minecraft may have chosen to do so to encourage early purchases, but now we can charge full price and people will still line up to play our first-person zombie dinosaur survival MMO!